CSUN, Foundation Come to Terms on Endowment

Terms of a $500,000 endowment for a history professorship at California State University, Northridge have been agreed upon by the university and the donor, the W. P. Whitsett Foundation, the university announced Tuesday.

The agreement appeared to resolve a dispute within the CSUN history department over several conditions in the foundation’s original proposal, which some history professors said infringed on academic freedom.

Family Drops Conditions

Those conditions, including one that required the holder of the endowed chair to “have an understanding” of Van Nuys founder W. P. Whitsett’s “strong belief in God and country,” were dropped by his family to pave the way for final agreement, said history Professor Sheldon H. Harris, a member of a faculty committee involved in the negotiations.

The money, to be donated through the foundation by the Whitsett family, will be used to establish a professorship and a lecture series focusing on California history, according to a statement issued by the university.

“The university community is extremely pleased,” CSUN President James W. Cleary said in the statement. The gift “ will bring great distinction to the university.”

Although Cleary and Michael Meyer, chairman of the history department, applauded receipt of the $500,000, reaction was mixed among several history professors who had protested the earlier Whitsett proposal.

Professor Ronald Davis said the “much-improved agreement” allayed his fear that academic freedom would be compromised. But he said he remains worried that the history department may someday be called upon to help finance the Whitsett chair, whose specialty is one in which the department is already very strong.

“There are still fuzzy areas that may come back to haunt us,” Davis said, asserting that the agreement does not clearly obligate the Whitsett Foundation to pay the costs of support staff facilities for the professorship. Many CSUN history teachers already share offices.

Another history professor, Shiva Bajpai, worried that the endowment might not be enough to fully finance an endowed professor’s $50,000-a-year salary plus travel, research and other support costs.

Meyer said the university will manage the Whitsett gift, with faculty participation, so as not to strain department or university resources. He said those disturbed about the endowment from the start are “a small group.”

“When you get gifts, I think it is petty to attack the possibility of something being drained from you rather than celebrating,” the department chairman said.

“We’ve finally gotten through a horrendous affair,” Meyer said. “In my mind, it was something that ought not to have been a controversy . . . and should have been handled in-house.”